Like a Lioness in Hunt
by Cliodna
Summary: What would you do in this circumstance?


Disclaimer: I make no money from writing! Don't sue!

v **Like a Lioness in Hunt **

Author's Note: I was in a weird mood, and I remember Roald Dahl's 'Lamb to the Slaughter.' Lovely short story if you ask me. 

******

It was a rather dismal England day, and in a rather dismal cottage, in a rather dismal village, a rather dismal young lady prepared dinner for her dismal husband. 

"Its always the same…" she murmured to herself bitterly as she placed an unruly curl behind her ear and began to chop some vegetable. Any moment her husband would be home, and as per usual he would be expecting a feast. Today's specialty: lamb chops and pumpkin pie.

There was a loud 'pop' in the air coming from the direction of the drawing room, and Hermione knew her husband was home. With a heavy sigh, she put a stop to her current occupation, and did her wifely duty in welcoming her husband warmly. 

"Good evening, darling." She greeted, a smile on her face too wide to be sincere. A quick peck on the lips and off to serve him his favorite drink: Butterbeer laced with a bit of Firewhiskey. It was the daily routine, part of the daily tradition, and it never changed. 

Ron sat himself in front of his favorite chair, in front of the crackling fire, and paid no heed, and said not a word to his fussing wife. Hermione thought this rather odd, for it was he who always tended to surpass her in the art of superfluous conversation. 

In order to get away from the current air of gloom her husband seemed to have shrouded over himself, Hermione abandoned the living room to the warm sanctuary her kitchen proved to be. She was about to cut into the lovely pumpkin when she heard her husband beckoning to her. 

A sudden fear in her heart, Hermione approached him cautiously. He was acting quite peculiar today, and Hermione could not think of anything that would cause him to act thus, unless…

"Hermione," Ron began, clearing his voice a bit. He dared not look at his wife, and Hermione felt the distance in his tone and in his eyes. "Hermione, I must tell you something." 

Hermione felt a pounding in her heart far worse than any she had ever experienced before. A sudden blinding light flashed before her eyes and made her head spin. _He knows! He bloody knows! And surely now I shall pay for it… _

She tried to keep her thoughts from seeping from under her veil of cool composure, but Ron knew the thoughts that rushed through her mind and he felt his heart break even further, even while it hardened itself against all pity. 

"I know, about you…_and Harry_…" 

Hermione closed her eyes and felt the heat come to her face, a form of resignation etched upon her countenance. 

"Upon learning this information, I have come to a decision." Ron said coldly. He looked at his wife with a contempt so firmly set; Hermione fancied it chained her to her doom. 

When Ron told her what he would do, she felt her body stiffen and the life fly out of her. How could he do this? How? Did her sacrifice mean nothing then? All these years of pleasing him, making up for a guilt still fresh in her mind, did this mean nothing to him? 

Sure, her heart belonged with another, but she had sacrificed it all, the life that could've been, the life that _should've_ been, all to avoid breaking his heart, and the hearts of all who expected such a wretched union. 

Hermione ran from the drawing room, back to her kitchen sanctuary, and burst into sobs. How selfish could he be? To do this now, after all these years, _now_, when she had no chance to reclaim the lost glory of her life? How abominably must the fates treat her? Cruel, cruel fate, why has not the string been cut? 

Drying her tears, a new resolve cast itself over Hermione's desolate frame. She could not allow this to happen. No, not after enduring the bastard all these years. She would not be cast aside…

Like a lioness in hunt, Hermione cunningly cast a levitation spell on her pumpkin. That pumpkin, that big, juicy, orange pumpkin, which at one point was to be her husband's dessert, was on its way to serve a better purpose. 

She levitated the pumpkin all the way to the drawing room, where her prey stood in a perfect trap: he had his back to her, he was staring out at the gloomy eve, a stubborn look on his face.

Hermione never hated a man more than she did at that moment. 

Without further hesitation, she levitated the pumpkin high above her husband's head, and let it drop. 

Instantly Ron crumpled to the ground, his head looking like a bloody mess. 

The pumpkin, however, was unharmed. 

Hermione ran over to Ron and checked his pulse and vital statistics to see his current state: _he was dead._

The high ceiling, and the weight of the pumpkin, the speed in which it fell, all were accomplices in this wholly indefensible act of homicidal application. 

Hermione sobbed quietly by her husband's side for a while, but immediately the rational part of her took over.

She quickly took the pumpkin to the kitchen, cleaned it up a bit, and hastily made it into the pie it was meant to be. Leaving the pie to bake in the oven, she changed into her very best robes, and apparated out of the house.

She found herself in Diagon Alley, and there, she flamboyantly entered Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor, and asked Mr. Fortescue in the sweetest voice she could muster:

"Mr. Fortescue! Do you have any more of that delicious pumpkin flavored ice cream of yours? Remember how much my husband Ronald Weasley raved about it? Well, I baked him pumpkin pie for dessert tonight, and I know it would be even better if he had some of your delectable ice cream to accompany it." 

Hermione flashed him the most charming and benign smile, which caused Mr. Fortescue to blush the very shade of his strawberry flavored ice cream. "Why sure Mrs. Weasley, anything for such a wonderful woman. Why, I wish 'ol Mrs. Fortescue would bake me a pumpkin pie every once in a while…"

This remark caused Mrs. Fortescue, who was serving ice cream to another customer nearby, to glare daggers at her husband. Mr. Fortescue laughed it off however, and gave Hermione the ice cream she so amicably demanded. With various protests, Hermione accepted the ice cream on the house, and endured various proclamations from Mr. Fortescue about "what a lovely wife," she was. 

When she finally arrived home, she entered the drawing room of her house to find the body of her dead husband surrounded by a pool of blood. She gave a loud scream, and called the Ministry immediately.

When the Aurors finally arrived on site, they tried to interrogate a hysterical Hermione, who gave an account of the evening's events: 

"Well I was cooking Ron a wonderful dinner, he always expects a feast when he gets home, when suddenly I realized we had no pumpkin ice cream to go along with the splendid pumpkin pie I have in the oven. So I decided that I might slip out and buy him some before he returned home from work, but when I got back, I found him…he…"

At this point Hermione threw herself into melodramatic sobbing, and the fretful Auror could put up with her no longer. "You calm her down," he told a fellow Auror as he went off to search the perimeter to try and find the culprit of such a heinous act. 

And so the Aurors looked, and looked, and yet they could not find the person responsible for the death of Ron Weasley. "Maybe we should be looking for a weapon, perhaps," one Auror suggested. 

"I cannot imagine what could have caused such a head laceration," another Auror replied. "It doesn't look like a spell to me." Nevertheless, the Aurors did Priori Incantatem on Ron's wand, which showed his last few spells to all be apparating spells, and Hermione's wand, which proved her last two spells to be apparating spells, and the one before that to be a levitation spell on a pumpkin. "I couldn't lift the pumpkin on the counter to make the pie!" She explained with a laugh, "It was sooo heavy!"

The Aurors accepted this explanation without a hitch, and Hermione released a breath she did not know she was holding back. She sat herself down in Ron's favorite chair, and quietly overheard a conversation some of the Aurors were engaged in: 

"Do you think she did it?"

"Her? Of course not, there isn't proof enough, and she has a verifiable alibi. I sent a guy to Florean Fortescue already, he says her story's true, and that she was too much in love with her husband to do something like this. Besides, she is Hermione Granger, best friend to Harry Potter, they're heroes of the Wizarding World! You know that. Besides, Ron Weasley has enough enemies on his list that anyone of them could have done it. Probably some old You-Know-who sympathizer who just won't go away if you ask me."  

Hermione giggled silently to herself, but she abruptly stopped when she heard the timer in her oven go off. _It was the pie._

Feeling the necessity to rid herself of such a vile pastry, a sudden idea struck her mind. 

"Excuse me," she addressed the group of Aurors quietly, making sure to add the right amount of melancholy to her voice. "I baked a pie for my husband tonight, and I'd rather not have it go to waste. You guys have been so kind to me, I would really appreciate it if you had it." 

The men protested a bit at first, but a few admonitions and tears from Hermione were enough to change their minds. 

"You know," one Auror began as he sat at the dining room table with his colleagues, feasting on pumpkin pie and ice cream. "I find it a bit odd that we haven't found a weapon yet. It couldn't have been a wand that killed him, I've never seen a spell that could do that before, so it must be something physical." 

"Its probably around here somewhere," another Auror replied, enjoying another bite of pie. "We just haven't looked hard enough. Its probably right under our very noses!" 

Hermione, who was again listening to the conversation from her quiet corner in the drawing room, giggled quietly to herself, and watched the dismal fire die in the grate with a satisfied smile. 

*~*~*~*~

Fin


End file.
